There are precious few — if any — rusty-patch bumblebees left in Vermont to benefit from its weeks-old protection as an endangered species.

Ditto for the Ashton cuckoo bumblebee, which hasn't been seen in these parts in more than a decade.

The yellow-banded bumblebee, also a once-common native species, has been freshly listed as threatened — a less dire designation.

The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources quietly added the three bees to its roster in late March, without so much as a press release.

A muted celebration is in order, said ANR Secretary Deb Markowitz on Wednesday.

"The listing is part of a bigger conversation," Markowitz said. "The broader issue is: What is happening to our pollinators?"

The question is much more than rhetorical.

It forms the crux of a balance she hopes to find with Vermont's farming community — which after all, depends on pollinators for successful crops of apples, tomatoes, blueberries and bushels of other fruit.

Yet, a growing body of science in the U.S. and in Europe indicates that the valuable presence of bees on farms is almost certainly undermined by the widespread use of certain pesticides.

Cross-currents

Neonicotinoids (more commonly shortened to "neonics"), used commercially or in common lawn and garden sprays, are lethal to bees.

Citing the chemical family's toxicity to pollinators, the European Union has had a ban in effect since 2013.

Closer to home, the Vermont Law School campus last year became the nation's first higher-education institution to become neonic-free.

Earlier this month, the city of Portland, Oregon, banned neonics.

A day later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would approve no new uses for outdoor use of neonicotinoids. The agency noted its policy position was an interim one, and could be revised after its scientists complete an ongoing pollinator risk study.

So far, this country's tide of neonicotinoids has not turned.

On the contrary, those chemicals have benefited Vermont forests and fields, Markowitz said, noting their effectiveness against gypsy moths and hemlock woolly adelgid, and in protecting local apple orchards from insect damage.

Deference to the agricultural community is alive and well in the state listing of those three bees.

It exempts anyone from enforcement action if the animals are "taken" inadvertently through acceptable applications of pesticides.

Markowitz described the trade-off as a work-in-progress: Farmers and conservationists are sifting through the emerging scientific studies, and will continue to fine-tune an "alignment of interests" on pesticides and pollinators.

"From my perspective, the first step is calling out the problem," she added.

"Theoretically, almost anyone who wants to put pesticide anywhere would have to get a permit. You could be right next to a nest and do some serious damage — and you wouldn't even know about it."

Kick the spray-can

On the face of it, McFarland said, the new listing has no teeth.

But, like Markowitz, he sees the designation as an opportunity to ramp up awareness of the precarious state of dozens of pollinators that didn't make the list.

Commercial applications of neonics are typically subject to some kind of oversight within a training and certification process, he said; spraying operations at the lawn-and-garden scale, on the other hand, are rife with opportunities for abuse.

"There, you can easily get concentrations that are 90 percent higher than you would in an agricultural situation," McFarland said. "Most people would be shocked to know that it's doing real damage to bees in their garden."

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A bumblebee feeds on pollen from a purple coneflower Aug. 16 in Burlington’s South End.(Photo: JOEL BANNER BAIRD/FREE PRESS FILE)

Blind spots

There are other opportunities for education and scrutiny, said Cary Giguere, chief of the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets' Agrichemical Management Section.

On Wednesday morning, six people were down the hall from his office in Montpelier, taking a certification exam to apply commercial pesticides in the upcoming growing season.

Managers of turf, timber and agriculture need that certification if they will be applying pesticides to other folks' property.

And on your own turf? You're on your own, said Giguere, who among other things, tracks how and where pesticides are applied in the state.

If someone buys a pesticide in Vermont, it shows up in his database.

"If people order a quantity through Amazon, it doesn't," Giguere said.

There are other blind spots.

In January, his office released a study that had been commissioned by the Vermont Legislature: "Neonicotinoid Pesticides; Safety and Use."

It notes that a significant source of neonics — coated on seed corn imported from out-of-state — are not subject to state regulation.

Bedding plants and nursery stock (both local and shipped-in) often are treated with neonicotinoids, and likewise lie outside current state oversight, Giguere said.

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A rusty-patch bumblebee (Bombus affinis) from the 20th century, pinned and preserved in the University of Vermont’s Thompson Natural History Collection.(Photo: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS FILE)

Smell the roses

Neonics are systemic pesticides: They're absorbed by plants, either through their roots, leaves or stems. Apple trees are vaccinated against possible insect damage.

The "prophylactic use" of neonics is troubling because it doesn't discriminate between healthy pollinators and pests, said Aimee Code, the pesticide program coordinator at Portland, Oregon-based Xerces Society for Insect Conservation.

Another risk raised by Code: Like the routine use of antibiotics in farm animals, insect species exposed to neonics might develop resistance to the poison — leaving farmers with the choice of upping the dose or developing other safeguards.

She favors integrated pest management, an approach that emphasizes more targeted controls and a broader regard for adjacent animal and plant habitat.